In Amsterdam last week, I was visiting an exhibition about impressionism, featuring paintings by Monet, Renoir and Pissarro.

The Impressionists as they were called mockingly first, wanted to capture moments, the play of shade and light with few and quick brush strokes. Just recently enabled by the invention of paint in tubes, they painted in the open air and tried to capture the atmosphere of what they saw.

They had to paint quickly and couldn’t afford to spend too much time on details cause the light changes rapidly and those windows, they wanted to capture were open for just a short time span.

But details weren’t their focus anyway, it was the mood of a moment, a feeling, fleeting, moving. Monet once said “For me a landscape does not exist in itself, it changes every moment in appearance, but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life.”

For today, let’s get into their footsteps and write poetry in an impressionistic style

Claudia – “it’s not perfect” – I don’t know if I can write with that pressure! (ha!)

This is a lovely post and idea. I don’t think my cockroach poem exactly fits – although there’s a certain amount of impressionistic skittering -, so I will try to come up with something else later today or tonight! Yours was terrific. k.

Thanks for hosting, Claudia, and you pick one of my favorite things, Impressionism. I will have to see if I can open some windows and look at the light–though here it might shrivel things up more than illuminate right now. Great prompt.

Love, love, love this prompt Claudia! My favourite artists – and the challenge to write quickly….. Gosh, now I feel quite breathless!
Off for a lie down, but will be back in a bit to have a read round. 🙂

Claudia, What a fun challenge! I wrote a poem quickly and didn’t worry if it was perfect. 🙂 Somewhere on my computer at home I have a picture that could go with it, but I’m hoping my words will be visual enough. Peace, Linda

I posted a link to this post on my Facebook page, along with the haiku I posted above. One of my Facebook friends responded within seconds with the following poem. I thought it was rather amusing and post it below with his permission.

Here’s Gordon E Moore’s poem:

Words.
Strung together.
No rhyme or reason.
Wins praise.
From poets.
For being deep.

I’m probably a bit off the mark on the prompt this afternoon, but several things came together this morning to inspire the poem I’ve submitted, and so I shoved it onto the stage. I hope you don’t mind.

Decided to join you today! A fun little challenge–hoping I got the gist of what impressionistic writing is! Sharing my “impressions” of the lovely heat wave we are enjoying here in New England. Found the perfect image to go with it on my dear friend Charlie’s blog. Thanks for hosting and the great prompt, Claudia!

Hey! Mine was fast and turned out a bit more serious than I wanted but I think that’s a key point. Just because you are thinking of one way does not mean your writing turns out that way. Am I correct guys?

This was harder than I thought, Claudia, especially just letting it be and not adding some allusion to timely thought. I’m going to keep trying the light brush of impressionists rather than the heavier brush of stream of consciousness (where I am much more comfortable).

And BTW, although I think I have a tweeter account I neither tweet nor read tweets–but I seem able to use this site anyway. Is that a fluke?

Still a beginner, I guess you call my entry free form… away for a few days, it will take me a day to catch up with reading and commenting…love this theme…I actually thought of many possibilities but chose the freshest in memory..

I saw all 3 panels of the Waterlilies together in St Louis about 35 years ago, each owned by a different museum. – they were together last summer for the first time since and I didn’t get a chance to see them. I make do with a large print over my stairwell. And I do drown in them with each viewing! K